News, DSL, and Meeting...

[Robert Dinse <nanook@eskimo.com>]

     § IMPORTANT NEWS ABOUT NEWS, DSL, & UPCOMING USER MEETING §
     >=-------------------------------------------------------=<

     ¤ Regarding News ¤

     We replaced Eskinews today, formerly a Sun 4/670MP with dual Ross
RTK-625 CPU's, it is now a Sun SS-10 with quad RTK-625 CPU's.

     This will provide twice the CPU, more bus bandwidth and more disk I/O
capability.  I apologize for the timeing; I had originally hoped to do
this late at night.  The machines were late getting here and they arrived
on a friday.  I did not want to keep the old machine in service over the
weekend if we could avoid it so decided to put this up today. 

     I had anticipated it being a fairly easy upgrade, but the Linux
kernel that booted fine on the Sun 4/670 would not boot on the SS-10. An
older kernel would boot but died with mass OOPS's within a few minutes of
operating. 

     It took quite a lot of experiementation to come up with a kernel that
would boot and run, and crashes are painful because an fsck of the news
spool takes approximately 1-1/2 hours to complete. 

     ¤ Regarding DSL ¤

     I am signed up with both Qwest and I've paid MegaPOP to be able to
provide DSL; Qwest will be going through Covad and one other outfit, the
name of which escapes me at the moment.  The 3rd quarter book from Qwest
was supposed to have the necessary info but now that I've dug through it
it does not, so I am trying to get the info I need on that, and MegaPOP
hasn't got me setup yet, and were supposed to fax information (I called
them yesterday), but it still hasn't arrived.

     ¤ User Meeting This Sunday - July 18, 1999 ¤

     This Sunday at 2:30pm, there will be a user meeting at Ballard
Godfathers, on 15th N.W. between 61st and 62nd in Seattle. 

     I will have some Unix Command Summary pamplet's that SSC makes there
for free.  They are a good reference to have at hand for beginners; if
you're just starting to explore the shell, stop by and pick one up. 

     At the last meeting, one person showed up (beside myself).  I don't
know how much of that was because it was Fathers Day, but if there is not
significant turn-out at this one I am going to discontinue further
meetings until and unless there is some significant interest.